3. use seduction by developing bonds and encouraging targets to believe the group can provide something.

4. develop dependency by direct social pressure to influence a decision that the group has special power or knowledge or can solve a problem; the people in the group are made to seem interested in what is best for the target -- then they "up the commitment level".

5. shift the target's social and emotional attachments to individuals who have already accepted high commitment and are conforming to the behavior WHILE decreasing the target's outside relationships.

6. increase the CHANGES in the target's: income employment personal friends/social life finances sexuality.

THIS INCREASES THE THREAT TO THE PERSON IF THEY WANT TO LEAVE THREATS: ARE TO THE INDIVIDUAL'S stability of identity emotional well-being

7. the community standards become the ONLY standards available for self-evaluation.

CULTS AND CULTIC RELATIONSHIPS CULT - the political and power STRUCTURE of a group CULTIC RELATIONSHIP - those relationships in which a person intentionally induces others to become totally or nearly totally dependent on him/her for almost all major life decisions and inculcates in these followers a belief that he has some special talent, gift or knowledge.

PRIMARY IN OUR DISCUSSION OF CULTS IS THE PRACTICE AND CONDUCT OF THE GROUP, NOT ITS BELIEFS.

Further references:

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Robert J. Lifton, M.D., University of N.C., Chapel Hill, 1989 Chapter 22